[natch]

Just watched it.

From what they say it sounds like they were seeing large panels of ice or snow that flaked off of a large snowball core, something that must have been big enough to survive reentry.

She described the motion as bouncing around with no discernible trajectory, something you would expect from a falling flat-ish object.

He says it “came up to meet him” (and then disappeared btw) but that kind of wording is often heard from fighter pilots, often even referring to the ground “coming up” so I don’t take it as confirming that the thing was actually going upward.

The FLIR shows another similar item seemingly flitting off suddenly (“accelerating”) but that kind of visual can come from the system suddenly losing its lock on the object.

[libertine]

So it was snowing large panels of ice or snow for days, on clear sky days (said by Fravor), large enough to pop on radars and sensors of both ships and jets?

Because that was the context of the event: they didn't happen to come across it.

It was being recorded in radars for days, and the squadron were asked to check it, by a radar operator, because they were doing an exercise near by.

Oh, and remember: one of the jets remained above while the other dove. 2 different types of observations - he was on the plane that dove down, she remained up above.

That's what makes the event bizarre: it wasn't a single random phenomena, it was happening for days and then observed by 4 witnesses at different angles/altitudes.

It would be easier to wrap this up into a lie, hoax, propaganda to get funding, then to recurring meteorological rare phenomena never observed by radars or pilots.

[natch]

Sorry this is sort of a grab bag of topics but I think I address all your points and add a few more.

Not snowing. The objects came in from space, on a ballistic trajectory. Something like a large ice ball, like a micro comet. Not a snow storm. Nothing to do with weather.

An ice ball from space could easily go undetected and enter the Earth's atmosphere and land in the ocean. If it was big enough, some parts of it could survive all the way down. It would probably break up as it fell, or possibly even before entering the atmosphere.

I'm envisioning a long chain of these large ice balls / snowballs, origin unknown, hurtling through space on a trajectory that places them on earth in roughly the same area over the course of a couple / few hours. Not an everyday event, but more plausible than the mystery aircraft theory.

If a large body of ice hit the water, the impact site of the body that hit the water first could have whitecaps. The ice object could even float back toward the surface and stay just under the surface, also causing whitecaps. The size of a 737 would be not out of the realm of possibility for such an object.

Meantime, at least one smaller (still large) "flake" was still falling, tumbling in the air due to its shape. Listen to Alex's description on 60 Minutes of how it moved. A large flake of ice falling through the air fits the description perfectly. The color also fits. It also explains why the object could just disappear: the sonic boom from a nearby jet encounter could shatter the snowy ice object and make it dissipate in a matter of seconds.

By lucky coincidence, out of all the millions of flights of fighter aircraft over water over the last few decades, in this one single instance, a pilot, several pilots together in fact, happened to be there to notice the falling ice. A remarkable sighting, but not unbelievable by any stretch.

If… IF… it's true that it lasted for days, that's would be a problem for my explanation. Thing is, we don't know for sure that that is the case here.

First of all, the source of the radar data? A system that was programmed by Fravor's buddy.

Second of all, another poster said that the radar system was new at the time and bugs were still being worked out, and that ghost contacts are common at such a time.

BTW the acceleration seen on the FLIR video is explained perfectly by the system losing the lock on the object. (Which, assuming it's undoctored footage and the accounts are accurate, would have to be a different flake of ice which was falling somewhat later than the first flake, because it was a different sortie by a different pilot).

The assertion about two viewpoints is carefully emphasized by Fravor (I saw him with Lex Fridman) but notice that we never hear from the second viewpoint the details that he adds.

Alex sat there in the chair on 60 Minutes giving a brief overview and refraining from contradicting anything Dave said but also leaving some details to him alone (possibly because, having a different perspective much higher up, she wasn't able to confirm everything he said). For example, notice that she did not confirm that the object flew upward. He alone said "it came up to meet him" as he was going down.

So we have one person's word for that part of this, and many of the other details. His word alone. He would then reply "oh but three other people saw it" but I say, listen to what they say: silence. We are going on his word alone.

[libertine]

Oh, I didn't realize you were talking about space ice, my bad.

Never heard of such a theory and I'm glad you shared it, it was out of my realm of possibilities since it never occurred to me.

But like you said, this doesn't explain the recurrent event, or the radar information.

>We are going on his word alone.

There. This is where I'm split, and where a lot of people tend to handle carefully because of the respect people have for US Navy, specially pilots, and no one seems to dare to say:

- What if Fravor was wrong and led everyone who trusted him into the wrong conclusions?

Could he have seen something ordinary and blew it out of proportions due to his - clearly massive - ego, just because he couldn't identify what ever it was, even with all of his experience and being one of the main guys in the ship?

Everyone could have seen something and not identify it, and relied on Fravors approach to try to figure out what it was, and the frame of reference for the squadron was based on his information.

Could they have missed what ever it was if it wasn't mentioned by a radar operator dealing with bugs/glitches? Probably. Yet they were looking for something in the area, and something they found. Was just a coincidence that they came across something that was in one of the areas pinned by the radar? It's a large ocean.

On the other hand, only they know what they saw, and they're experienced bunch. Plus it had to be an odd, and rare, chain of events (forgot to mention that other squadrons flew after them and got another video that leaked). Yet again, they were all trying hard to look for something - things that could have gone unnoticed if they weren't looking for something (like a commercial plane at a distance they aren't used to see on their sensors data).

[natch]

>they're [an] experienced bunch.

Yep but nobody is experienced with this stuff I guess. But I get what you mean and agree.

Thanks for being a reasonable person and replying thoughtfully, that’s a breath of fresh air on the internet sometimes. :)